Felton Diary: Chopping wood, carrying water

During my Zen training in the early to mid-1990s at the San Francisco Zen Center, there was an expression that still revolves around these Buddhist circles that one has to take the responsibility of chopping wood and carrying water. The meaning here — in case you ever find yourself facing a wall in meditation or, gasp, facing a Zen roshi, or master — is that life is filled with mundane tasks that need to be done.

Lindependence 2008 lately is filled with chopping wood and carrying water, although sometimes the work seems like chopping water and carrying wood. But I digress . . . .

In the last diary installment, I mentioned that I was a little taken aback by the response — or lack thereof, mostly — of distros and FOSS programs to come running to participate in this project. To me, this project is a natural — bringing their distros and programs to a community and having both the community, and their software, flourish.

However, I discounted the human factor where human contact plays a significant role. So out with solely using the ether of the Internet, and in with making my contact with potential participants a little more personal.

Discussions with OpenOffice.org and PCLinuxOS point to probable support going forward, and that’s heartening. So, in sending out a second wave of e-mails, I may start to make calls as well asking for support — just to remind you that there is a human behind the words that grace the screen in front of you.

Incidentally, if you haven’t heard from me and want to participate in Lindependence 2008 — or if you want your favorite distro or FOSS program to participate — e-mail me immediately at lcafiero-at-fixedbylinux-dot-com and I’ll get the process started.

There’s only a little over three months left, which may seem like a lot of time, but looking at the amount of work ahead of the team, it’s not a lot. The earlier people get on board, the faster the bandwagon goes.

Clear and cool, as late March tends to be, a mile down the road from the Bigfoot Museum in the HeliOS Solutions West office in Felton.

(Larry Cafiero, editor/publisher of Open Source and Free Software Reporter, is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)

Interesting that in your blog you find us all a bunch of stoned “librals” — by the way, it’s spelled l-i-b-e-r-a-l-s — promoting the communistic “open source” software, but you still continue to visit and read this blog.

Also, people don’t literally chop wood and carry water at the San Francisco Zen Center. It’s an expression, meaning that you have to do the mundane things in daily life, and that there is virtue in performing the simplest of necessary tasks.

Jesus understood this, and scripture is filled with examples of the glory of everyday life. Hopefully, you’ll understand it too.